


This Life

by nyanbacon



Series: Restless Eternity [8]
Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: Medium - Freeform, Other, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Spritiual Connections, Spritiuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 08:55:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24468325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyanbacon/pseuds/nyanbacon
Summary: Cole just wants to see them. Even if they don't know as much as he does, even if he doesn't know who they are in this life. He just wants to see them.
Series: Restless Eternity [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552921
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	This Life

Cole had been born with a gift. When he was younger, he always felt like he was walking on a tightrope; like he was one moment from falling off the edge of reality and plunging into the dark waters past the veil.  
He learned, eventually, how to control where is consciousness was in space and time. He doesn’t remember learning. He’s sure that he learned in dreams, from someone who existed once and no longer does. Someone he called Sensei, and who called him Master when it was time for Cole to go on his way.  
He worked out of his house. Some people called him crazy. Other people called him insightful. Whatever their thoughts, he knew he was in the right. His constant teetering in and out of reality was real. This wasn’t insanity. This was… something else. Something beyond him. Something beyond all of them.  
He rose to his feet, setting a hand on the shoulder of the customer before him. A frequent customer, who came to commune with her dead husband. It made him sad to see how much she still relied on his ghost for emotional support, but she always seemed lighter when she left than she had been when she came in.  
“Cole.” She stopped in the beaded curtain that separated his ‘office’ from the rest of the house. She turned to look at him. “May I ask you something?”  
Cole tilted his head slightly. “Of course.”  
She pointed at something in the corner of the candlelit room. “What’s that?”  
Cole turned to consider the table. It was a table he took very good care of. Fresh flowers and food were placed on the altar every day. He had made the cloth himself, and the picture frames.  
But the picture frames were empty.  
“It’s an altar.” He looked at the woman before him. “For people I haven’t met yet.”  
She looked up at him. Her eyes were still glimmering with tears from their session, but now they seemed to shine with something else. She set a hand on his arm. “I hope you find them soon, Cole.”  
He smiled warmly and nodded. Next to the warm feeling in his chest that came when he helped people was now a dull ache. A reminder that he was waiting on people he didn’t know.  
He shut the front door behind the client and rested his forehead against the wood, sighing heavily. He had no more clients that day, something that he was thankful for. Cole strode through the beaded curtain back into the heavily scented room. He picked up the incense burner at the center of the table and dumped the ashes into the trash can into the kitchen. He put out all the candles in the room, except for the ones on the corner altar.  
He strode over and sat down before the altar, staring into the empty picture frames. When he closed his eyes, he could see the faces he’d never seen before.  
A hard face, passionate, proud, and warm. Sympathetic. Dangerous. Malleable. A mind waiting for maturity.  
A prideful grin set in front of a mind that deserved that level of confidence. Smart, bright, bashful. Confident. A light in the dark.  
A passive face that misled the people who knew him. A kind soul, someone deserving of love. Cold, but soft. And smart. Oh so smart.  
The more he thought about these strangers, the more his heart hurt. He hung his head and buried his face in his hands, smearing tears across his cheeks.  
He could see them sometimes. He hadn’t mastered looking back into the past. Living in the moment was so much easier. But he’d seen them. He’d seen them live, and love, and laugh, and die. He didn’t know how to find them now, because it hurt. It hurt so bad to go back just to get a glimpse of them. He never stayed around long enough to learn their names. But he knew everything about their characters.  
He wanted to see them. He doubted they’d know as he did. He knew too much. He knew too much and not enough. He still wanted to see them. Were they the same, this many lifetimes forward? Were they sharing the same life he was?  
He sat in front of the altar for hours, his head in his hands. Eventually, his back started to hurt, and he pulled himself out of the swirling waters of the veil so he could rise to his feet and put the candles at the altar out. His hands trembled.  
He just wanted to see them in this life.

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's a piece of art I made for what medium Cole looks like](https://www.deviantart.com/nyanbacon/art/Medium-Cole-843895286)


End file.
